Happiness Cannot be Captured

Before I began meditating, I was constantly searching. I believed that a particular lifestyle, a certain level of status, or the right relationship would finally make me happy. I didn’t call it “happiness” at the time, but that was precisely what I was chasing.

When I first encountered meditation, I immediately thought: perhaps this will lead me to happiness. I practiced intensely—harder than most—hoping to achieve some elevated, “happy” state. Months passed, then years, and my frustration only grew. Why was it so impossibly difficult? Some days I felt a strong sense of trust, a hope that happiness was just around the corner. But the feeling soon dissolved, leaving me once again stuck in the same old frustration.

What I had not yet understood was that one cannot walk the path to happiness after first deciding what happiness should look like. To do so is to walk blindly. I had formed a very specific idea: that happiness meant being inwardly free, calm, loving, and trusting. I was not entirely wrong—but it was far from the whole truth. The more tightly I clung to this idea of happiness, the more frustrated I became.

Then one day something shifted. A quiet insight arose: happiness cannot be held onto. Why? Because happiness is already here. Happiness is the natural state of the world, and this natural state can only be seen when we release the frame we have imposed on it. The moment we try to superimpose our own picture of happiness onto life, it ceases to be happiness at all—it becomes a static, lifeless concept we try desperately to grasp.

We can certainly fool ourselves for a while by holding onto an idea of happiness. It is a bit like thinking of something nostalgic while experiencing something in the present moment. We may momentarily recreate a familiar feeling and even convince ourselves that it is the same happiness returning—but soon we realise it is a futile and impossible game. Those old, cherished memories will not return in the way we imagine them, because they are not reflections of reality as it is now.

When this insight came, it felt like a quantum leap in the mind. Everything is perfect exactly as it is. Whatever happens, whatever I feel—joy, sorrow, despair, or hope—I am already happy, because happiness is always right here.

Michael